


Love is the Harder Times

by Snow



Category: Firefly
Genre: Family, Female Character of Color, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-24
Updated: 2010-03-24
Packaged: 2017-10-08 07:20:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snow/pseuds/Snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoe, post-Serenity</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love is the Harder Times

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song Run, by Kathleen Edwards.

Zoe's a good follower, but she wasn't following anything but her own moral sense when she signed up to fight with the Independents. She's never once given up the ability to make the big decisions herself. She's just happy leaving the battle strategy to Mal (except when he decides to be a fool).

Zoe's a good judge of character: she knew Simon was just a kid in over his head from the beginning and she knew Mal wouldn't turn his back on Simon and his sister before Mal did.

Zoe's a good lover, and she never once had doubts, in the wake of Wash's death, that knowing him was worth it. It's not a fear of loss that makes her unready to move on.

Zoe's great to have in a bar fight, and she's also excellent at acting drunk when she's not. It's both a great way to get the drop on people who aren't expecting it, and, on occasion, hilarious. She's not been genuinely drunk since a month after the war ended, but it's such a laugh to see how flustered Mal gets when he thinks she is.

Zoe's a good mother, and she thought very carefully before deciding to raise her daughter on Serenity. Zoe loves Nia with all her heart, but she's careful to avoid saying things like "You have your father's eyes" because first of all, Nia's eyes are brown, like Zoe's, and secondly because Zoe values Nia for reasons entirely separate from the fact that Wash is dead. Instead Zoe does things like convince Mal to visit Chang'e and show Nia the people who juggle geese.

Zoe's more than a decent shot, but she'd rather not rely on her ability to outshoot a man, not when she's cleverer than he is and it doesn't have to come to that.

Zoe was a decent younger sister once, but she's not anymore. She has no clue what happened to her brother.

Zoe's not precisely unhappy. Sure, she can no longer count on her fingers all the things she wishes would have gone differently, but she can't find one decision point where she would have liked to make a different choice.

Zoe supposes she's coming close to being serene, these days.

Except when her daughter hadn't done her chores. Then she wraps herself in a mother's caring and disappointment and tracks down her daughter from the engine room, where she'll be hanging with Kaylee. Zoe knows Kaylee will frown, blame herself for distracting Nia from her chores, and offer to do the chores herself.

Zoe knows she'll laugh and order Nia off to do them herself.

Zoe almost finds herself looking forward to that moment.

**Author's Note:**

> I welcome and appreciate all kinds of comments, though I would (obviously) prefer if any criticism was constructive. :)


End file.
